MD Collaborates with First Light Fusion to Accelerate Advanced Innovations in Clean Energy

Key Highlights

• First Light Fusion deploys Machine Discovery’s AI-powered platform to accelerate complex multi-physics compute-intensive tasks to record speeds
• The collaboration enables First Light Fusion to deliver clean energy on a significantly reduced schedule

Santa Clara, CA, January 30, 2023 – Machine Discovery's AI-powered Discovery Platform is delivering acceleration for compute-intensive optimization and prediction tasks and is adopted by First Light Fusion.  As a result of a multi-year close collaboration between the two companies, the Discovery Platform is now proven to accelerate the development of the key technologies required to deliver fusion clean energy at record speed.

Finding the optimum fusion solution in record time

First Light Fusion is a UK-based leading fusion pioneer seeking to deliver fusion energy using its unique ’projectile’ approach – a branch of inertial confinement fusion that uses high-velocity projectiles rather than lasers. In deploying the Discovery Platform, First Light Fusion achieved the ability to explore the design space in record time to find an optimum fusion solution. The Discovery Platform delivers ease of use, performance, and scalability to accelerate compute-intensive tasks for optimization and prediction.

Large-scale simulation studies for the end-to-end design of fusion systems using multi-physics software are central to First Light Fusion’s approach. A key challenge for First Light Fusion is to rapidly locate design space optima for the models used in these studies. Machine Discovery’s latest collaboration with First Light Fusion resulted in a solution that significantly speeds up optimization tasks with high-quality of results. As a result, First Light Fusion can now rapidly assess the full potential of new designs. This has accelerated the pathway to commercial fusion power.

Thanks to novel AI technology delivering the ability to explore larger design space

Machine Discovery’s unique AI Platform offers First Light Fusion the ability to manage complex collaborative projects across large teams, with a large number of simulation runs. The platform’s novel emulation technology creates, from the simulation output results, rapid Neural-Network-based models for prediction, delivering many orders of magnitude faster prediction with accuracy. The platform’s optimization engine uses AI algorithms for optimization and sampling and combines simulation and Neural-Network model outputs to enable the exploration of a significantly larger design space at a record speed.

“Our objective is to deliver fusion energy as fast as possible. As a result of our multi-year collaboration, Machine Discovery has enabled us to achieve significant productivity to automate and optimize complex tasks,” said Nicholas Hawker, Founder and Chief Executive of First Light Fusion. “With it, we are improving design performance and gaining insight for optimum results in delivering the fusion energy.”

“Today’s large, complex engineering challenges require quick and predictively accurate results with scalability,” said Bijan Kiani, Chief Executive Officer at Machine Discovery. “We are pleased with the progress of our multi-year collaboration with First Light Fusion which has enabled Machine Discovery to deliver a solution that is addressing today's complex engineering challenges at record speed. This work is well aligned with our strategy of contributing towards the development of low-cost clean energy in enabling First Light Fusion to develop complex fusion reactors to a significantly reduced schedule.”